


With Every Cell In My Body

by pyre13



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Epilogue, Full Circle, Hopeful Ending, M/M, No Beta, Oliver Created The Flash, Quick Draft, Speed Force, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27796402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyre13/pseuds/pyre13
Summary: When you’re ready, you’ll find me in the Speed Force.———————The Speed Force leaves an imprint of its Speedsters, and they on it - or - everything comes full circle.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Oliver Queen
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	With Every Cell In My Body

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll preface this by saying I haven’t seen the last season of Arrow yet, but this absolutely amazing YouTube video deserved something written.
> 
> I really recommend you go check it out!
> 
> https://youtu.be/aCAwnAK4N5o

He runs. A shift in a thought, a flicker of memory. He thinks best in the silence at the epicentre of a sonic boom. There’s peace in the speed. Balance in the wind whipping past him, and the flickers of friction lightning. The Speed Force. He doesn’t understand it, but he knows it, knows that it leaves a trace in every Speedster in defiance of time or reality. That every Speedster leaves an imprint on it in return. The final universal constant. Entirety in an instant.

The world slows around him, and there, on the edges of awareness something flickers. Voices. A voice. Low and rumbling; amused and enraged and so very very sad. It haunts his dreams; lingering on the edge of his world at every turn. He’s missed him so much.

When he finds him - he thinks he should have known. The rooftop. Their rooftop.

“This is the first time we really met.” The sound of his voice is almost enough to shatter him, but he clings to the Speed Force with a death grip. He’ll die here rather than leave - trade his life for a few more seconds rather than lose him again now.

“I really hated the greasepaint.” Oliver chuckles, turning his head and shimmering, hood and bow and hated paint fizzles away to reveal the man he had become. “I missed you so much. It took me so long to remember -“

“You can’t stay here Barry.” And Oliver’s eyes are sad now.

“What?” Indignant and outraged Barry wants to grab him and rip him from this world into reality. But this isn’t like when he was lost. Oliver isn’t here in his atoms. There’s nothing to pull back. “I have before. You weren’t here then.”

“I was here. I couldn’t... The Speed Force - it’s....” Oliver hesitates like he’s pondering how to continue. “Maybe it’s a quirk of physics, maybe it’s Heaven, but it’s not yours. Not yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The First Law of Thermodynamics described it best Barr’.”

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be changed from one form to another.”

“It has to go somewhere right?”

“The Oliver I knew didn’t quote Einstein.”

“I have a good teacher.” And there’s soft crinkles around his eyes now. Happiness.

“Have.”

“Time doesn’t move the same here, you know that. Your future is already my past.” Barry inhales sharply - he can’t mean.

“Then i can stay. I can stay here in the Speed Force with you.”

“Not yet.” Somber, but calm, like their entire future, past, present, isn’t shaking around them. “The world still needs you.”

“There are plenty of other superheroes! You told me once that the lightning CHOSE me but Earth doesn’t need me anymore Oliver!”

“Yes. There are. And yes, I did choose you.” And suddenly Oliver is right there, hands holding his cheeks as he vibrates. “But there’s only one Barry Allen. And his story isn’t finished yet.”

“I’m tired Oliver. I want you. I want to rest. I want...” his brain stops. Cycles. Shorts out.

“You chose me.” He repeats blank. “The lightning... you said...” Oliver’s face is soft now, letting him pull the prices together and Barry’s heart stutters.

“You told me once that that lightning bolt ‘chose’ me. That was you?” He doesn’t know why he’s so sure but all of a sudden he is, and it kills him. “Then it’s fixed. A fixed point in time. It always was.” For a fraction of a moment Barry wants to rage and scream and burn the world to its knees. Because it’s not FAIR. Oliver started this - knowing how it would end. Knowing everything that would happen along the way.

“You knew. Not him you -“ and he waves distractedly to indicate Oliver’s previous breathing self. “This you. You knew how it would end and you still—“ he can’t. It’s too much. Knowing Oliver chose this path not once but time and time again.

“It’s okay -“

“How can you say that!? You died Oliver! You’re dead! What? You STARTED this knowing it killed you?”

“What would you give for forever?” Grabbing him right by the cheeks Oliver forces him to meet his eyes. Gesturing around him, Barry blinks. The world is flashing memories that aren’t his, memories of a life he hasn’t lived yet. No - not a life - the Speed Force isn’t life. An existence he hasn’t lived yet. Dreams he hadn’t dared. They look happy. He’s older, and younger. Fast and slow. There’s quiet and bloodshed. Entire eternities not yet experienced. Faces old and new.

“I - “ Barry doesn’t have words. “Everything. Anything. Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because it’s time to tell you.” And Oliver shrugs, like that’s not the most rage inducing thing he could have done. “Because there’s more to come and you. Are. Not. Done. Yet!” And that’s the Arrow that he knows, growling low and soft and deep enough to make Barry’s soul ache.

“I don’t want to lose you again.” And it’s a soft broken sound, Oliver’s soft and reassuring smile a balm in reply as he touches down his face and cradles his chin. Slow, and soft, like they have all the time in the world he leans in and kisses him.

“Trust me. Trust me and you never will.” Oliver’s eyes are penetrating his soul, searching, hoping, begging. “Trust me Barry, follow me, just once more. I’ll be here. You’ll find me when you’re ready. Do you trust me?” Feeling the Speed Force begin to spin him out Barry grabs Oliver’s neck hard and crushes their foreheads together.

“With every cell in my body.” 

The wind calms and Barry is alone. Their rooftop is cold and desolate and starkly real around him. He realises he’s vibrating - slowing with every second as his heart thumps hard and cycles down. His knees give out. In the distance he can hear Kara rushing to his location, Cisco screaming in his ear and the city bleeding back into reality. He smiles.

“With every cell in my body.”


End file.
